(You can read my review here).
There's a giveaway at the bottom of this page, but first, I got to ask Jo one of my favorite questions!
What frightens you, and how does it influence your work?
But what really gets me. What will start my heart pounding and provoke cold sweat into trickling down my back, is both wolves and the dark.
I blame The Never Ending Story for the wolves. Hated that big, black one. It still sends shivers down my spine.
However, the dark. Oh how I do not like the dark. Especially being outside at night. Alone. With all of that black and shadows and little noises that don't exist during the day.
I'm a writer, for crying out loud, I have an overzealous imagination, so in my mind there are magical creatures out there ready to eat me, or take me to another realm or very simply squish me for fun. And let's not even talk about what real life creatures could be lurking out there. Things that come in the dark are never friendly in my mind.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably do something to get over this fear. But not now. Later. Tomorrow. When it's light again.
The main character in New Sight ends up in a very dark dream-like world a few times. She gets trapped there , and I feel like I capture her fear pretty well. Lys (like bliss) wasn't afraid of the dark before her story starts, but by the end she's not a real fan.
I have a couple of tense scenes that happen in a darkened basement of a hospital as well as in the woods. Oh, and sewers.
Wow, I'd never thought about this before. Great question!
It's hardly surprising that my fears came out in these scenes, because as a writer writing what you know feels more real than anything else. Granted, I could take my fear of the dark and channel it into fear of heights, do some Googling, ask my sister (she hates the heights) and get a pretty good phobia going on for a character. That works.
I think the best part about fears is where they come from. It's always interesting to get the flashback to a character's fear of goats, or blue Skittles.
My fear of the dark came from the creepy basement in my house growing up. The furnace made strange noises, and light seemed to get sucked out of the entire space. I would go down the stairs, hang onto the wall and lean over as far as I could to reach the light switch so I didn't have to step on the orange, shag carpet without the lights on. Do not let those toes down until the lights come on. I really liked it when we got a switch you could push instead of toggle. Slapping that thing is still satisfying.
I might have something against orange, shag carpet too. But that doesn't make an appearance in the story. Neither do wolves. Not this time.
About New Sight
After succumbing to the sudden and terrifying urge to rip people's eyes out of their sockets, sixteen-year-old Lysandra Blake finds herself tied down in a psych ward, convinced she's crazy. The doctors have no answers, and Lys is ready to give up when the mysterious Jeremiah Mason appears, telling Lys that she's not insane—she's addicted to a rare and deadly drug that she has no recollection of using. Mr. Mason offers to take her to his facility where he can treat her.
Desperate yet suspicious, Lys agrees to go with Mr. Mason to his facility where she meets with a fellow addict, the tall and handsome Kamau. Together they discover that Mr. Mason may not have told them the truth about their condition—they're thrown headfirst into a world of daunting powers that are not only unbelievable, they are dangerous. Very dangerous.
About Jo Schneider
You can find her on her blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.